The present invention relates to woodworking planes and plane "irons" or blades and to methods for hiding metal fasteners used to fix wood members.
It is frequently desirable to fasten wood members, such as picture frame or furniture members and millwork or trim around windows and doors, utilizing metal fasteners such as nails or screws. It is also desirable to hide such metal fasteners. For instance, screws are often driven in countersunk holes and then covered with a wood plug fixed in the hole. However, even if the plug is machined flush with the surface of the workpiece, it will be readily visible unless its grain is very carefully matched and aligned with the surrounding wood grain. Doing so is extremely difficult and time consuming, if possible at all.
Both nails and screws have long been hidden by the alternative procedure of raising a small shaving of wood in the spot where the fastener is to be placed, locating the nail or screw in the depression left by the wood shaving, and gluing the shaving back in place. The shaving may be raised with a variety of tools, but a chisel is most frequently used. A chisel can be utilized freehand, but the desired control of shaving thickness and length is difficult to achieve. As a result a small "blind nailer" plane body has long been used to hold a conventional chisel at a fixed angle with respect to the wood surface and with a fixed portion of the chisel cutting edge protruding beyond the sole of the plane in order to facilitate raising shavings of uniform thickness and of desired length.
Conventional chisels utilized with such chisel holding planes typically raise a shaving which has a substantially rectangular cross-section and edges which are not cut but are broken or torn free of surrounding wood tissue. Consequently, such edges are ragged, and it is therefore often difficult to glue the shaving back in place in such a way that the wood surface is smooth and the shaving edges are not easily detected visually.
Additionally, conventional chisels are longer than is desirable for use in a blind nailer plane body in view of the typical blind nailer and human hand geometry and dimensions.